- Buterin sold roughly 17,000 ETH (~$43M) via CoW Protocol in February.
- Arkham data shows attributed wallets fell from about 241,000 ETH to 224,000 ETH.
- Sales followed a January pledge of 16,384 ETH for privacy and security projects.
- Ether has fallen about 37% in a month as staking yields have compressed to ~2.8%.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has sold 17,000 ETH worth $43m in February, according to data from Etherscan. This is not his first donation to projects, as Buterin donated 22,000 ETH, or $46m, to privacy- and security-focused projects in January.
The Ethereum token has fallen 37% over the last month and is trading at $1,912. Buterin carried out the sales through a large number of small transactions on the CoW Protocol decentralised exchange aggregator.
According to data from on-chain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence, a large amount of Ethereum (ETH) has been transferred to several of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s addresses. At the start of February, the Ethereum addresses in question held around 241,000 ETH.
Since then, the addresses have been draining ETH consistently and now hold around 224,000 ETH. The largest ETH transfers from the addresses occurred over three days in the middle of February, totaling around $6.6 million. Similarly, the Ethereum addresses transferred ETH totaling around $7 million over three days at the end of February.
Back in January, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin revealed that he had donated 16,384 ETH to “privacy research, open source hardware and software security projects.” Buterin also stated that he will be playing a key role in the projects and that the donations will be spread out over several years. The Ethereum Foundation has announced it is entering a period of “relatively modest austerity,” aiming to cut costs while still meeting its technical goals.
Over 30% of the ETH supply remains locked in staking pools, with the current staking reward now sitting at about 2.8%, which may not be enough for some investors to continue locking their ETH.
The ETH price decline has also caused institutional investors and miners to incur even larger unrealized losses on their ETH positions. This was highlighted by Bitmine Immersion Technologies, which said its paper losses are up by about 60% from 6 months ago, when the ETH price was at its peak.
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